Berkley Center

Margaret: I was born in the late '50s, the youngest of five children in Philadelphia, to a Japanese immigrant who had met and married my father, the US Army sergeant in Japan. My dad was African American and it was a most unusual time to be an interracial couple. They decided to join the parish church mainly because the Philadelphia public schools were on strike a lot. So they thought, "We want to be part of this local little flower, St. Therese of the Child Jesus church. How do you do it?" At that time, everybody in the family had to be a Catholic. So we all got baptized. So I grew up having a very strict Catholic school education. How about you?

Alison Benders: So both my parents, they're European descent, Irish, French, German, English background, Vatican II Catholics. And they really took seriously the church in the world. I have good memories of the community when I was growing up, but I know you've said maybe not so much of your Catholic elementary days.

Margaret: No, and it may be because I didn't associate Catholicism with community. It was a set of strict rules and guidelines that I learned at school, a certain terrifying kind of discipline. So I think the notion of community, warmth, fun, love was not present when I was growing up in terms of what Catholicism was about. It was about fear and it was about really not making mistakes.

Alison Benders: Wow. Wow. Because I remember our fun and joyousness. And the other piece though I do remember is our pastor was very interested in the civil rights movement that was going on in the '60s. We always lived in communities that were inner ring suburbs that were trying to integrate. So you and I, some of our relationship has been formed around relationships across racial boundaries. And I'm always curious about your story because my husband and I are different races, he's African American. So I want to know what my kids are experiencing and in part by hearing your stories, although they're generations apart.

Margaret: When my daughter was growing up, she had a very secular upbringing and she and her best friend were in the backseat of the car. And one of them said to me, "Is Moses in the Old Testament or the New Testament?" And I thought, "Oh, I really need to teach these girls something about religion." So I did send my own daughter to a Catholic high school. And of course I wanted to be part of the community. So I started going to a church in Oakland that it describes itself as a African American Catholic church. I swear when I walked in, I had never seen a Catholic church like that. And it was very open and welcoming. And I think that sense of community is what brought me back into Catholicism.